In the world of the inconceivably small but mighty

Dr Susan Hua, recipient of the 2015 HMRI Early Career Researcher of the Year Award, is proving that some of the greatest gifts to human health come in the tiniest of packages.

Like a creative motor mechanic custom-building the ideal courier car, Dr Susan Hua is tinkering with vehicle parts to get parcels from A to B – just on a microscopic scale. She’s designing digitally-precise transport modules for pharmaceutical substances, masterfully applying nanotechnology to the diagnosis, prevention and treatment of disease.

“Most conventional medicines, such as tablets, capsules and injections, are essentially high doses of free drugs that are distributed to all parts of the body,” the pharmaceutics enthusiast elaborates.

“This means they’re not very efficient and increase the risk of adverse effects.”

“There are also some really great novel compounds in the research and development pipeline that are unable to reach the site of disease when delivered on its own.”

“These compounds either suffer from stability issues and are easily degraded following administration, or have physicochemical properties that affect their pharmacokinetics (movement of drug within the body).”

Susan’s research interest is in the cutting-edge field of therapeutic targeting – by making existing and new medicines work better with fewer side effects and toxicity through the use of nanotechnology. Essentially she is interested in designing and manufacturing “vehicles or carriers” that she can load these medicines into, and then modifying the surface of the vehicles to act like a “GPS” to direct the cargo to the site of disease. This allows the development of more effective and safer medications and diagnostic agents.

“This technology is important to allow compounds to bypass biological barriers that would otherwise degrade or hinder their accumulation at the target site,” she asserts.

“This allows maximum targeting efficacy with lower doses and frequency of doses, as well as reduced side effects and toxicity.”

“It’s fast-tracked translation.”

THE JOURNEY TO NANOMEDICINE

Susan completed her Bachelor of Pharmacy degree with Honours at The University of Queensland, attaining a prestigious University Medal, before working as a clinical pharmacist.

In this role she was able to see first-hand how so many of her patients were experiencing devastating side effects from medicines that were actually helping to treat or manage their condition, such as patients with cancer or chronic pain.

“Drugs tend to cause side effects when it harms the healthy cells in the body,” she explains.

“Chronic pain affects the quality of life of so many people, with current treatment limited by sedation, confusion, gastrointestinal upsets, respiratory depression, and dependence.”

Susan believed that there had to be a way we could improve these therapies.

“That’s when I realised that if I wanted to help make a change, I needed to become involved in research.”

This spurred her to pursue a PhD in the field of neuroscience and nanotechnology at The University of Queensland, where she sought to cement a systematic, nuanced understanding of the peripheral mechanisms of inflammatory pain.

“Immune cells contain a lot of useful endogenous analgesics that don’t have the nasty central side effects, such as sedation, dependence and nausea,” she explains.

By understanding the neuroimmune interaction between immune cells and the peripheral nervous system, she was able to use nanotechnology as a tool to mimic this activity exogenously.

“It was about understanding the intricate networks occurring in peripheral inflammatory conditions, and taking advantage of what the body already has to further suppress the pain and inflammation,” she states.

Prior to joining the University of Newcastle, Susan took on a postdoctoral position at the ANZAC Research Institute in Sydney to strengthen her research skills in biochemistry and cellular signalling. This time concentrating on the heart, she looked to gage the therapeutic consequences of oxidative stress on “good cholesterol” or high-density lipoproteins (HDLs) in cardioprotection.

PASSION FOR PHARMACY

Susan joined the University of Newcastle in mid-2010 as a teaching and research academic within the School of Biomedical Sciences and Pharmacy. She teaches intensively into the Masters and Bachelor of Pharmacy Programs in the fields of pharmacotherapeutics and pharmacy practice.

Passionate about the pharmacy profession, Susan enjoys using innovative teaching methods to reinforce key material in a clinically applied approach.

“When students understand why and how we use specific medicines to treat different conditions, they start to appreciate the advantages and disadvantages of current treatments from a pharmaceutical, pharmacotherapeutic and pharmacy practice perspective,” she says.

“Hopefully, this inspires them to become clinical leaders in the pharmacy profession or to improve disease outcomes by pursuing a research career.”

Starting from scratch

Susan has become a leader in the field of therapeutic targeting and translational nanopharmaceutics. Since joining the University of Newcastle, she has independently established the first translational nanopharmaceutics laboratory and research program in the Hunter region.

“There was no pharmaceutics laboratory or nanomedicine-based research program when I arrived, therefore I spent a lot of time establishing a new research program and laboratory from the ground up,” Susan affirms.

The general research focus of her laboratory is on therapeutic targeting utilising novel drug delivery platforms in biomedical applications.

“I am particularly interested in using nanotechnology to study novel mechanistic pathways, as well as to develop more efficient therapeutic delivery systems.”

Her research expertise covers the areas of advanced pharmaceutical formulation and characterisation, in vitro cellular studies and preclinical in vivo animal studies. This expertise provides a solid foundation to formulate and evaluate new drug delivery systems and to apply them to pathological disease states, in order to assess potential clinical applicability and identify novel therapeutic targets.

TRANSLATIONAL RESEARCH

Susan has already procured a number of competitive grants and patents, as well as established a productive publication track record. In 2015, she was awarded the HMRI Early Career Researcher of the Year Award, highlighting her significant and valued contribution to the research community.

The majority of her projects are translational and hence are currently under IP commercial in confidence stages. These projects have all applied the use of nanotechnology across a number of research disciplines. She has built strong collaborations with other major research groups locally at the Hunter Medical Research Institute and John Hunter Hospital, and around the world.

Susan is now balancing onsite pharmaceutical investigations with a multitude of fruitful collaborations.

“A number of my key projects are focused on developing novel treatments for pain and inflammation, an area in which I have established important animal models of acute and chronic pain at the University of Newcastle.”

Susan has also teamed up with Laureate Professor Nick Talley and Professor Marjorie Walker to launch the Priority Research Centre for Digestive Health and Neurogastroenterology.

“I’ve been able to work with these two amazing clinician scientists to develop new treatments for gastrointestinal diseases by targeting inflammatory cells in the gut,” she enthuses.

“The results have been exciting and have the potential to revolutionise the way we treat these patients”.

“I’m also working with Professor Roger Smith and Dr Jonathan Paul from the Mothers and Babies Research Centre, to develop a novel targeting system that will deliver contraction-blocking or contraction-inducing drugs to the uterus for preterm labour or postpartum haemorrhage.”

“Having a translational team is important in this field of research.”

This collaboration draws upon Susan’s specialised expertise in manufacturing the targeted liposomes, and couples her skills with Jonathan and Roger’s research expertise in reproductive medicine to apply the novel treatment platform to both human and animal models.

“A new grant from the National Health and Medical Research Council will help us fast-track this novel technology into primate studies,” she attests.

Big prospects for small engineering

The future is wide open for nanomedicine, and Susan is acutely aware of its promises.

“Putting free drugs into the body is not our best way forward,” she advocates.

“The goal of my research is to improve the way we treat patients through designing medicines and diagnostics that are better at specifically targeting the site of disease – in this way we are able to increase their effectiveness and significantly reduce the risk of side effects and toxicity.”

Career Summary

Biography

Associate Professor Susan Hua (BPharm, Hons, PhD, MPS) has been a full-time teaching and research (T&R) academic at the School of Biomedical Sciences and Pharmacy since 2010. She is a registered pharmacist in Australia and has several years’ experience across various fields of pharmacy, including hospital, community and research. A/Prof Hua has a Bachelor of Pharmacy degree and a PhD from the University of Queensland in the field of neuroscience and nanotechnology. Since her appointment at the University of Newcastle, A/Prof Hua has independently established the first translational nanopharmaceutics laboratory and research program in the Hunter region focused on therapeutic targeting using nanotechnology. Her background as a clinical pharmacist has given her a thorough clinical understanding of therapeutics and disease states, and has allowed her to identify promising research avenues in therapeutics and drug delivery.

Research Expertise

The general research focus of A/Prof Hua's laboratory is on therapeutic targeting utilising novel drug delivery platforms in biomedical applications. She is particularly interested in using nanotechnology to study novel mechanistic pathways, as well as to develop more efficient therapeutic delivery systems. For example, a number of her projects are focused on translational pain research in the areas of peripheral analgesia and inflammation. A/Prof Hua has established important animal models of acute and chronic pain at the University of Newcastle, including the AIA rodent model of chronic arthritis and the CFA rodent model of acute inflammatory pain. Her research expertise covers the areas of advanced pharmaceutical formulation, in vitro cellular studies and preclinical in vivo animal studies. This expertise provides a solid foundation to formulate and evaluate new drug delivery systems and to apply them to pathological disease states, in order to assess potential clinical applicability and identify novel therapeutic targets. A/Prof Hua’s research provides a platform for the translational development of targeted therapeutics that will ultimately provide a novel therapeutic strategy in clinical disease management.

Research Collaborations

A/Prof Hua’s research program has provided a translational component to the research currently conducted in Newcastle and the Hunter New England Health region. This has led to research collaborations with several key Priority Research Centres at UoN and HMRI, including Digestive Health and Neurogastroenterology (in which she is also a member); Reproductive Science; Cancer Research, Innovation and Translation; Healthy Lungs; and Brain and Mental Health Research. A/Prof Hua has also established research collaborations with national and international institutes, including University of Queensland, Monash University, University of Adelaide, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Utrecht University, University of Twente, and University of Washington.

Research Achievements

A/Prof Hua has secured in excess of $2.6 million in competitive research grants and infrastructure funding from a number of different sources. Highlights include successful NHMRC funding, a GAPPS international grant, the Pharmacy Research Trust of NSW grant, and funding from the Rebecca L. Cooper Medical Research Foundation. A/Prof Hua has also generated novel IP where she designed, manufactured, characterised and optimised novel drug delivery platforms for targeting reproductive pathologies (APP1050584 and APP1113847, #2014271207), as well as developed new delivery models for drugs that target inflammatory cells in the gut (#2016904629). Despite IP restrictions on a number of her projects, A/Prof Hua has established a productive publication track record, having first or senior authorship positions on over 85% of her publications. A/Prof Hua’s research has also led to invitations to speak at various conferences/symposiums both locally and internationally.She is an editor for Frontiers in Science – Neuropharmacology, a member of the NHMRC Research Translation Faculty, and an active external reviewer for grants and publications in the field of nanotechnology, pharmaceutics, pain and inflammation. A/Prof Hua was awarded the 2017 NSW Premier's Prize for Early Career Researcher of the Year, 2016 NSW Young Tall Poppy Science Award, 2016 Newcastle Innovation's Excellence in Innovation Award, 2016 Faculty Award for Research Excellence, and 2015 Hunter Medical Research Institute (HMRI) Early Career Researcher of the Year Award.

Teaching and Administration

A/Prof Hua is teaching into the areas of Pharmacotherapeutics and Pharmacy Practice in the Bachelor of Pharmacy program at the University of Newcastle. She is the Course Coordinator for both PHAR2101 (Dermatology and Topical Formulations) and PHAR2102 (Cardiovascular and Renal Health). Her teaching style incorporates a diversity of teaching methodologies and techniques in which she has developed and adapted from her own experience in Pharmacy. Her goal as a teacher is to instil a passion for learning within her students while providing them with an educational environment that is encouraging and positive. A/Prof Hua is also the Bachelor of Pharmacy Year 2 Coordinator and Pharmacy Advisor on the Institutional Biosafety Committee (IBC).

A/Prof Hua strongly believes in the importance of high quality teaching and positive motivation of pharmacy students and junior pharmacists to sustain the quality use of medicines in the community.

Communication & Community Engagement

A/Prof Hua was awarded the 2017 NSW Premier's Prize for Early Career Researcher of the Year, 2016 NSW Young Tall Poppy Science Award, 2016 Newcastle Innovation's Excellence in Innovation Award, 2016 Faculty Award for Research Excellence, and 2015 Hunter Medical Research Institute (HMRI) Early Career Researcher of the Year Award, for her significant and valued contribution to the research community. Her nanopharmaceutics research is frequently covered by the media, including radio and newspaper. In 2015, her research was front page news in The Newcastle Herald “Nanotechnology is one of the Hunter’s fastest growth industries”. Notably A/Prof Hua’s research into the design of safer and effective medicines using nanotechnology generated national interest, with Today Tonight (Channel 7 television news) dedicating an entire news segment on her research “The miracle of nanomedicine”. Aside from mainstream media, she has also utilised a multitude of other platforms to expose students and the general public to the world of science, pharmaceutics and nanotechnology. A/Prof Hua regularly participate in high school work experience programs and talks to encourage students into the field of science. She has also given public talks, Q&A sessions and utilised social media to communicate her work. She is regularly involved in organising and presenting at public forums in science, including the HMRI Medical Research Week, HMRI Open Day, and Nanotechnology Symposium. A/Prof Hua’s efforts are fostering young women and men to become the next research generation.

Qualifications

Doctor of Philosophy, University of Queensland

Bachelor of Pharmacy, University of Queensland

Keywords

Active targeting

Acute and chronic pain

Arthritis

Inflammation

Lipid-based delivery systems

Liposomes

Nano-delivery systems

Nanomedicines

Nanoparticles

Nanotechnology

Opioids

Passive targeting

Pharmaceutics

Pharmacology

Pharmacy

Preclinical studies

Targeted drug delivery

Therapeutic targeting

Translational nanopharmaceutics

Fields of Research

Code

Description

Percentage

110322

Rheumatology and Arthritis

30

111599

Pharmacology and Pharmaceutical Sciences not elsewhere classified

20

100709

Nanomedicine

50

Professional Experience

UON Appointment

Title

Organisation / Department

Associate Professor

University of NewcastleSchool of Biomedical Sciences and PharmacyAustralia

Awards

Award

Year

Award

2017

NSW Premier's Prize for Early Career Researcher of the YearOffice of the NSW Chief Scientist and Engineer

2016

Excellence in Innovation AwardNewcastle Innovation, The University of Newcastle

2016

Faculty Award for Research ExcellenceThe University of Newcastle - Faculty of Health and Medicine